Some media hacks may cover themselves by saying all Trump supporters are racists, comfortably deferring some uncomfortable questions about the situation we face. But the hardcore white nationalists nesting in the Trump camp certainly do not think that to be the case. They fear the day Trump is found out to be a fraud, who will not be bringing any factories back — but by then, they hope the window will have been cracked enough for their beliefs to have slithered into the White House, respectable and airbrushed.

Irrelevant but for their bloated sugar daddy, such white supremacists cannot be willed into non-existence. But they can be isolated and weakened and deprived of importance, their most shameful and terrifying need from the straight world. Trump’s racist followers aren’t the “alt-right,” a marketing appellation coined within that community which the media readily, regrettably adopted. If they must be thought of at all, they are “shitheads,” “anime Nazis,” or simply, “Republicans.”

That's all for this time. I'll be back next time...if there is a next time...

Wednesday, November 16, 2016

The best match in Survivor Series history was Bret Hart defeating Steve Austin at MSG in '96 (full disclosure, I was there; fuller disclosure, I marked out for pretty much everything all night - 2 Cold Scorpio, Furnas & LaFon, Sid winning the title - whatever you got, I was into it).

There hasn't been a 4 star Survivor Series match since. It has not been a good show for awhile.

This year's offering has a show long storyline, the feud between RAW and Smackdown, which have been split after years of unification. Here's the card.

1. Brock Lesnar (w/Heyman) v. Goldberg
-Back from the dead is Bill Goldberg, putting aside the bad taste of his first WWF run to return to the promotion for what, apparently, is a one off match against Lesnar. The storyline has borrowed from what apparently is Goldberg's IRL desire to have his son see him wrestle; the build is...straightforward to the point of being childlike, Goldberg is a superhero and that's what it takes to stop Lesnar. It's been fine - there's a potential challenge in the actual match; Goldberg wasn't that good when he was good, he's now an old man facing Brock, who comes up huge when motivated and less so when not. Even if they add a garbage stip, if this match goes longer than 10 minutes the Canadian crowd may turn on it. I'll say Lesnar goes over; it feels like Sting/HHH; even if they decide to use Goldberg again, they don't put him over here.

(Edit - Nope. Goldberg squashed him. For me, this is a terrible use of resources. If you want to push Goldberg, as apparently they do, you have him go over virtually any other established guy, Lesnar's uniqueness takes a real hit here. Have Goldberg squash HHH, his boost is similar and the promotion doesn't need HHH having an invicible aura. And if what you want is to build someone specifically by killing Lesnar, have it be a guy who is staying. If Nakamura debuted by killing Brock Lesnar you've created a star.)

2. IC: Miz (w/Maryse) v. Sami Zayn
Miz was the champ when last we left (Summer Slam) and held it until last month when dropping in a very good match to Ziggler; they switched back in the go home Smackdown. They lose some workrate here, giving up a Ziggler/Zayn match which would have looked like the top match on the card - in order to get some storyline, Miz is on a good heel run, feuding with Bryan Danielson who has a figurehead leadership role on Smackdown. That's a nice, multi-year story, with Miz representing sports entertainment, a WWE created wrestler - and Danielson, obviously, the pinnacle of someone who spent years having great matches on the independent circuit and forced his way into WWE main events on the force of his wrestling ability and fan reaction to that ability. Zayn, running in place as a RAW babyface, is in that Danielson lineage, but his win would take the IC title away from Danielson's "brand".

I don't know the booking here -- I have the juniors moving to Smackdown in the next match, so even though having the US and IC both on RAW seems excessive I guess they put Zayn over and maybe move the US to Smackdown at the Rumble. A pre-match trade might be fun, Danielson betting that Zayn will win, so he willingly gives up the IC title by sending Miz over to RAW. Ideally, Zayn then goes over.

(Edit - Miz kept in screwy Montreal related finish. 3 1/4)

3. Cruiser: Brian Kendrick v. Kalisto
-Over the summer, WWE held a juniors tournament, the Cruiserweight Classic, featuring some of the best wrestlers from around the world (Ibushi, Tozawa, Sabre, for example) - it was presented almost entirely as pure sport, there were a half dozen 4 star and up matches, it's the best thing the promotion has done in years.

Then they instantly blew it - they brought the juniors which signed full time into the promotion, stuck them in the middle of RAW and they've put on nothing but instantly forgettable matches.

But now - a ray of hope. WWE is launching a juniors only program that will follow Smackdown on Tuesdays, and this match is for control of the entire division; if Kalisto (a Smackdown wrestler) defeats the champ Kendrick (a RAW wrestler) then the juniors move to Smackdown. The new juniors show is likely to be good and a move to Smackdown just makes a bunch of sense. Kalisto wins in a good little match.

The traditional Survivor Series matches don't have any stakes, there's not really a program between the two teams other than that there are two teams. That's okay, they'll use the matches to develop storylines within each team - an Ellsworth turn might make sense, his joining RAW and screwing the Smackdown crew. He winds up in the Rumble, they get their revenge and that ends his storyline. These elimination matches are generally just okay and that should be the expectation here.

That's it - hopefully Neville, for Counterfactual (that's my wrestling blog) purposes makes a pre-show match. It's a show you can skip.

(Edit, you shouldn't have skipped it. The singles match was 4 stars, the best elimination match in promotion history. The tag match was 3 3/4 stars, the second best elimination match in promotion history. The women's match was just a match. It was a good show, not the equivalent of NXT the night before, but on the high end of all time Survivor Series shows.)

Here's every Survivor Series match in history.

The match times are rounded and they are followed by my star ratings for all of the 3 stars and up matches.

131 (97) The New Age Outlaws (Billy Gunn and Road Dogg) and The Godwinns (Henry and Phineas) d. The Headbangers (Mosh and Thrasher) and The New Blackjacks (Blackjack Windham and Blackjack Bradshaw) 15:30

Sunday, November 13, 2016

Normally, what I do when I get through another 50 of these is provide links to the full record. Plan was to do that here as well, probably with whatever was the best Clinton picture from Tuesday.

Instead of that, Nazis.

Given that, I just wanted to give you stuff I find indespensible about what happened to us Tuesday.

Things I was wrong about.

-I didn't think decent people would vote for Trump. You wouldn't cast Trump as President in a movie. No studio would ever do that - he so obviously presents as a grifter, even before the reinvention as head of the white supremacists. Not everyone who voted for Trump is decent; many millions are just creepy, dumb, evil little deplorables. But there aren't enough of those people to win a general election.

-I thought Latinos would storm the polls for Clinton.

Things I was right about:

-Clinton was the wrong candidate for this election. Much of this country is a hallowed out husk; the reason is 30+ years of tax cuts/austerity/privatization/worship of the "free market". That's contestable, I recognize, but I've got the better end of the argument. When Trump's message is "things are terrible, I'll make them better" and Clinton's message is "things are already great" it makes it easy to vote for the first guy when you've lost your house to foreclosure or live paycheck to paycheck or wonder if you lose your job what could possibly ever replace it. Sure, repealing the estate tax won't make things better, but that's not the point (sure, some people in that category also are creeped out by transgenders or are otherwise unsympathetic plaintiffs from my standpoint; otherwise they'd all be Democrats)

-Clinton was the wrong candidate for this election. She stinks of the 90s. Stinks of it. Women, understandably so, are eager for their turn, but WokeHill never rang true, despite liberals telling you it did and that if it didn't for you, it was misogyny, even if you were also a woman. Every leaked email, every "I've got a public position and a private position" was just crap you left behind in the previous century. We watched that show; even people who liked it at the time aren't pulling out their old DVDs any more. The only show from the 90s people still want to see is Friends.

-Clinton ran a dumb campaign. Since the convention appearance of Bloomberg and Generals and Leon Panetta the attempt to get GOP votes instead of heading left to get your base to turn out was a terrible idea. The focus on Russia was never going to get out liberal votes; "lets talk about the Cold War" was just part and parcel of that 90s Clinton mindset to always move center. Old guys like me hated that mindset, hated what the Democrats became, and when Gore signaled he was going to continue, even carry that further by choosing a DINO like Joe Lieberman as VP, we voted with our feet in the general. Know what a good campaign is:

Do you have a pre-existing condition? Trump's promising to repeal Obamacare. Go ahead, ask him.

Who do you think will insure you if you lose your job? You want to talk about freedom? Freedom can't mean "I have to take whatever my boss dishes out forever or I go uninsured."

Don't talk to me about how Mitt Romney's voting.

-I'll tell you the one moment I bet Clinton wishes she could do over again. That second debate, right after the Access Hollywood tape - when there was such hot scrutiny on every move Trump made and he brought the WJC accusers. Remember the moment he was behind Clinton, right behind her - it was palpable that he was in her space? She needed to turn around and tell him to back down. She should have spoken sharply. She should have looked him in the eye and actually been the feminist hero her supporters tried to turn her into. You have to know the moment - and whatever the instinct is for a woman politician not to show too much strength needed to give way to understanding there was blood in the water and she should have been the shark. It's a small thing - she still is Hillary Clinton who talked about superpredators trying to reinvent herself, and admittedly this is just my pet theory, but at the time, as someone who used to make a living speaking in front of groups - at that moment I felt it, I felt the absolute right thing to do was bring fire and make him back down, make him cower (which he either would have done or he would have not done which would have been just as good). If it was a prizefight, Trump was in deep trouble in that round, came out swinging and exposed his chin - Clinton, normally a defensive fighter, remained defensive, lost the round and then the fight.

THE PARALLELS BETWEEN the U.K.’s shocking approval of the Brexit referendum in June and the U.S.’ even more shocking election of Donald Trump as president last night are overwhelming. Elites (outside of populist right-wing circles) aggressively unified across ideological lines in opposition to both. Supporters of Brexit and Trump were continually maligned by the dominant media narrative (validly or otherwise) as primitive, stupid, racist, xenophobic, and irrational. In each case, journalists who spend all day chatting with one another on Twitter and congregating in exclusive social circles in national capitals — constantly re-affirming their own wisdom in an endless feedback loop — were certain of victory. Afterward, the elites whose entitlement to prevail was crushed devoted their energies to blaming everyone they could find except for themselves, while doubling down on their unbridled contempt for those who defied them, steadfastly refusing to examine what drove their insubordination.

This one had everything: nativism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, misogyny, sexual assault allegations aplenty, and a final annihilation of all sense of shared history and foundational fact. And, on the other side, a compromised candidate whose organization trammeled the most economically promising working-class campaign in generations to deliver what is by now the Democratic Party’s sweetest platform: sheer, uncompromising terror at the alternative.4. I've Been Making This Point Since the Late 90s.In facilitating the election of Trump, the Electoral College has effectively disenfranchised racial minorities once again. The Electoral College underrepresented Clinton’s diverse, urban-centered coalition, and overrepresented Trump’s coalition, which is based around rural and suburban white people. Trump’s white nationalist demagoguery was unable to secure a plurality, let alone a majority, in a racially diverse country—but he didn’t need one.